“JongIn, what are you doing?”

Uh-oh, did he get caught?

He slowly looked up from his phone and met eyes with ByulHee, who was staring at him with her oh-so-scary eyes. He smiled nervously and tried to put away his phone but of course, ByulHee already detected it. He wondered for how long she had noticed him taking pictures of her.

“You were taking pictures of me, weren’t you?” she asked and before JongIn could answer, she was already chasing him around, and JongIn wasted not even a single second on running away. “DELETE THOSE PICTURES RIGHT NOW!” ByulHee said while her hand was still holding the ropes to the kite.

 “No way!” JongIn retorted, running away from her as if his life was depending on it. Well, his phone’s life was depending on it actually and he was holding on to it with his dear life. “It’s not always that I get to take photos of you. I’m keeping them as remembrance.”

“But you took them without my OK!” ByulHee stopped pursuing him now, feeling tired and at the same time worried about his kite. She didn’t want to by chance let it go while chasing JongIn; she would feel guilty until the day she died.

“Well, would you have let me taken them if I asked you?” JongIn dared with a raised brow and arms akimbo. “Somehow a big part of me says that you would still say no even if I asked for your consent. So I had to take them secretly.”

ByulHee sighed and handed him his kite back. Her hand was getting sweaty for holding the strings for so long. “What do you need my pictures for anyway? If I were ever to catch you doing something uncanny with them-”

“I won’t, Sunshine. What do you take me for?” JongIn assured. “I’m not that kind of person and you know it. I’d just like to keep them just in case we won’t be entering the same high school together. For all we know, we won’t see each other anymore once we’re done with this year’s school session. Perchance we’ll only get to meet again when we’re much older. By then I doubt we still remember how each other looks like.”

ByulHee let his words sank in, and deep down she couldn’t help but to agree with him. He was right, by the way. They might not see each other anymore once they were done with school for that year. None of them knew what the future might bring, and for all they knew, JongIn or she would’ve to go somewhere else and they may not see each other for a period of time.

The girl exhaled, hating to admit that JongIn was right. But then, she someway felt a tad sad if they won’t be seeing each other anymore after school ended. JongIn came from a well-off family, just like the other kids in the school, and they could be miles apart from each other, depending on where his parents planned to send him. They could enter the same school, if they were fortunate. Over again, they can never foresee what was yet to come. The thought of not seeing him again by some means made her feel sad. He was her first friend, anyhow.

JongIn could see it in her face, and smiled while ruffling her hair. “Don’t worry about it. My family hasn’t had any plans in moving yet, so don’t worry about it much. I just said perhaps. We could plan to go to the same school together, as well as the other boys just so you won’t be lonely. We all know just how lonesome you will be without us.”

ByulHee lightly scoffed and crossed her arms. She wanted to rebuff what he just said but couldn’t find anything smart to retort back. It amazed her that she herself acknowledged that JongIn was right.

Maybe she had really found a friend in him.

ByulHee requested him to show her the pictures he took using his phone, and JongIn did but insisted to hold the phone himself. He had a feeling that if he gave the phone to ByulHee, she would delete them all.

“I can email them to you later if you want.” JongIn asked, swiping his finger on the phone screen while showing her each pictures. He knew that ByulHee didn’t have a phone of her own yet, -and he wondered why it was so-, hence the least he could do was email them to her.

ByulHee pondered her answer and thought that it wasn’t a bad idea at all. If she had the chance, she could show the pictures to Chen, so that he could know what and how she’d been doing. It wasn’t the same as talking to him on the phone and showing him the pictures as proof. Besides, she finally made a new friend and ByulHee wanted to tell him that her friend took the pictures for her.

However, there was a slight problem.

“I don’t have an email.” ByulHee confessed, looking at JongIn with her eyebrows met. The boy’s eyes widened a little in shock, not believing that ByulHee didn’t even have an email address. Most kids nowadays had their own email addresses, considering their functions in social media networks and stuff.

Phone, he can understand. But an email address?

It startled him for sure, and he was more convinced than ever that he still knew next to nothing about ByulHee. But it was okay, there was always time for him to do that. One-step at a time.

“Alrighty then, Sunshine.” JongIn concluded. “I can help you create one. Things are always easier if you have an email, you know. People used to communicate a lot through email and they still are anyway. Even though it’s not as important as having a phone, but close enough. If you want to, that is.”

“Really?” ByulHee asked happily, as if JongIn had just offered her a candy. She did feel excited about having her own email actually. It was something new to her. She’d never paid much attention about things like that before as back at her previous home, they didn’t actually need it.

Everyone knew where everyone lived, and telephones weren’t paid much attention to as well. Each house only had one, and that was considered enough. Not everyone had their own cellphones, and ByulHee was one of them.

Besides, who was there for her to call? It was a small village and the only people she knew were Chen and her neighbor next door.

“If you have time, like, at the moment, we can create one right away. We can just use my laptop; I have it in my bag. It isn’t that hard, anyway.” JongIn offered, and ByulHee glad fully accepted it with a smile. “Thank you, JongIn!”

And so there they were, sitting down on the grass in the middle of the garden next to JongIn’s bicycle. He’d already pulled his kite down, since he’d lost interest with it already. They had his laptop on JongIn’s lap, and together they were working on creating ByulHee’s very first electronic mail.

They were quite lucky that it wasn’t as hot anymore, or they would’ve been grilled in the middle of the scorching sun. Or to make things worse, the heat could’ve affected his laptop and it would blow up.

“So, the first thing we should do is to come up with the email address.” JongIn explained. “Most preferably, it should be something simple and easy to remember. They will let us know if it’s too long or too short, as long as it’s easy for you to think of.”

ByulHee tipped her head, trying to come up with a simple address like JongIn had said. JongIn thought about it too, and came up with random and funny address that had both of them in stitches.

“SunshineByulHee?” JongIn suggested.

ByulHee laughed at the idea. “JongIn, that’s too childish. I’m 12, mind.”

“SunshineByulbyul?”

“Err ... no.”

“ByulbyulSunshine?”

“It’s the same. You just changed the position of words.”

“Youaremysunshine?”

“It’s a kindergarten song.”

“Sunshine12?”

“What’s with you and Sunshine, JongIn?” ByulHee asked in midst of laughter, noticing that all of his ideas had the word Sunshine, what he often called her. “My name doesn’t even mean Sunshine, yet you keep calling me that.”

“Yeah, ‘Byul’ means ‘star’.” JongIn said with a nod. “I just like to call you Sunshine because to me, you are like one. Then ... ShiningStar?” He suggested, and ByulHee looked at him in interest. “I kind of like that one. It still has the word ‘Shining’ from ‘Sunshine’, and ‘Star’ from your name.”

ByulHee nodded in agreement, a smile crept on her face, as she herself liked it too. “Yeah, that’s nice. Great idea, JongIn.”

JongIn pretended to scoff and waved the air in front of him. “Of course, Sunshine. I’m not Kim JongIn for nothing.”

ByulHee rolled her eyes, but her smile just grew wider instead of feeling irritated. She’d been used to JongIn’s jokes now, and found herself smiling a lot at them nowadays.

Hence, once they’d decided on the email address, they moved on to the password, and that took a short time as well. JongIn had given her the chance to create and key in the passwords herself without him looking, as it was a privacy for the email owner, but ByulHee trusted him and told him that he could do it for her.

This, indeed, made JongIn feel appreciative now that ByulHee had put her faith in him. However, understanding that only one person should know their respective secret code, he still urged ByulHee to do it on her own, telling her that it was confidential and he shouldn’t know what it was.

ByulHee nodded her head and did it by herself in the end, and made sure that she remembered what it was before turning the laptop back to JongIn. They spent a good quite half an hour creating ByulHee’s email, and JongIn handed her a piece of paper just so she can write down both her email and password, with the intention of she won’t forget them afterwards.

“So there you have it, your very first email. We can communicate through this on a regular basis from this day onwards. You have an iPod too, right? So you can open your email there as well.” JongIn said while shutting down his computer once everything was done.

ByulHee nodded and said, “So basically, we don’t necessarily need a phone to communicate too, right? Since we already have this to connect with each other, we don’t really need a cellphone, isn’t it?”

JongIn pondered her question and tried to think of an easy answer for her. “Well, it’s true that we can communicate through emails, but phones are essential too as they are much easier. Whenever you go out with your family and if you ever get lost or anything, you can straight away call them. It’s much faster and easier compared to having to send them an email saying that you’re lost, right.” He explained with a tease. “During emergencies, phones are much a better choice.”

ByulHee laughed, and nodded her head in agreement. “But then, what’s the function of email, then?” she asked again, feeling curious with all of this for a moment but somewhat happy that JongIn was able to answer her questions.

JongIn frowned but then smiled at her sudden inquisitiveness. He was more than happy to enlighten her anyway. “Well, you can use emails to communicate with those who are living abroad, for example. It’s expensive for you to call them if they’re staying in a different country, so email is a smarter choice, as the only thing you need is the internet connection. We can go to any cyber café for that. Besides that, we can share documents easily through emails. And communicating through email is cheaper compared to phones, I think. You could send pranks to other people by email too, but don’t do it. I’m just saying that you could. And if you want to communicate with someone but doesn’t have his or her phone number, just getting their email address would be enough. If only you’re too shy to ask for their numbers, that is.”

JongIn took a deep breath afterwards, and looked at ByulHee with a deep sigh. “I just gave you enough essay points regarding the topic ‘Advantages of Emails’, ByulHee!” He exclaimed. “If this topic comes out for our upcoming test, I’m sure we can nail it.”

ByulHee smiled sheepishly, and JongIn tousled her hair. For the next 15 minutes, JongIn told her a story about SeHun, BaekHyun and ChanYeol who teamed up t